This study examines the changing relations Estadosociedade in the state of Bahia, and the factors that influence democratic participation. From fieldwork conducted during several trips between 2001 and 2006 to Salvador, BA, collected data on the quality of community participation in the management of public schools in the urban planning process (PDDU) and the participatory budget started in January 2005 in that city.

I compared three areas of interaction between local government and society at large, civil society specifically. This article is focused in the last two policy areas, but in all cases observed, I found a very great distance between the de jure mandate of citizen participation and the actual situation of the political situation, and some conditions for democratic participation at the level location are revealed. The existence of this gap between law and reality may in part be explained by the continuing importance of "Carlist" in Bahia and therefore points to the possibility of local political regimes persist despite changes in the level of political elites.